[jsnell]

Nonsense. Of course it's partly about price. If it weren't about price then why doesn't Apple just raise their prices by a factor of 10 and really make a killing? Why did the Touchpad that had just totally flopped become a hot item when sold at a 80% discount?

Really price is just one way to differentiate a product from others in the same niche. Features, specs, manufacturing quality, app ecosystem, design, brand, usability, etc. are others. Those tons of low-end cheap smartphones are at least as critical to Android becoming the most popular smartphone platform as the ones that instead compete with the iPhone by better specs.

Right now Honeycomb tablets aren't all that good at positively differentiating themselves from the iPad in any useful way. Maybe some people desperately need some particular Android feature that can't be added to iOS in any way, or really dislike Apple. Not really a solid foundation... The closest exception is probably the Eee Transformer.

The real question is whether some other manufacturer really can lower the price enough to really make it a differentiating factor.

[wisty]

There's no margin in touchpads if you want to undercut Apple, but I bet Amazon doesn't care. They want eyeballs. Amazon is really good at datamining, and they already have your credit card details. If you interact with any channel they control, they will find a way to shake you down.

HP and the rest don't have that advantage - they need to make money off the touchpads, and Apple can undercut them by controlling the App store and locking down supplies.

[georgemcbay]

"There's no margin in touchpads if you want to undercut Apple, but I bet Amazon doesn't care. They want eyeballs."

The same goes for Google-rola. Should be an interesting next couple of years for the tablet business in terms of seeing how low these non-Apple players are willing to go on hardware price in an attempt to prop up their real moneymakers (content, ads).